It's extremely rare for a band to significantly alter its compositional style on its ninth album, after having stayed more or less true to one formula for close to a decade. It's even rarer for that change to come for a band that's just beginning to reap the benefits of worldwide stardom and commercial success. Of course, Opeth have never exactly been the type of band that concedes to convention. And thus, with their 9th album, they've done what few expected and posed their first serious challenge to themselves and their fans alike since 1998's My Arms, Your Hearse.
Watershed represents Opeth at their most progressive. They've always been a progressive band by metal standards, but this album marks the first instance of them being progressive by progressive rock standards. The structuring of the album as a whole is quite unusual. A typical Opeth record would start out with a lengthy, heavy song to set the pace for the remainder of the album. A shorter, mellow piece or two would be thrown in around the third or fourth track as a change of pace. However, Watershed opens with the 3-minute-long "Coil,” which, despite its brevity, is one of the most brilliant songs the band has ever done - comparable to Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen at their heartstring-tugging best, and featuring female companion vocals by Nathalie Lorichs [the first Opeth song to include female vocals]. While "Coil" segues smoothly into the much heavier "Heir Apparent", one should not make the mistake of calling it an introductory track, because it works splendidly as a stand-alone piece.
On "Heir Apparent,” Opeth reaches the opposite extreme, attaining a level of brutality that few thought them capable of. There's a speed picking section in this song that rivals even the likes of early Morbid Angel and Bolt Thrower in terms of full-throttle aggression. Of course, these brutal portions alternate with Opeth's trademark haunting clean melodies, but the transitions are so abrupt that they really come as a shock to the system the first time one hears them, especially when compared to the way Opeth would normally ease listeners from heavy part to mellow part in the past.
The third song, "The Lotus Eater" is another intriguing study in contrasts, opening with a passage that combines blastbeats with clean singing - a truly unusual pairing that works phenomenally well. The song proceeds in customary Opeth fashion for the first 4½ minutes before ebbing into a mellotron-backed segment that builds to a riff that will thrill prog geeks everywhere, hearkening back to King Crimson's Discipline with its ornate tapestry of interwoven guitar/electric piano/guitar melodies. The most blatant nod to the indulgences of 70s psychedelia and prog rock in Opeth's entire history.
But while "The Lotus Eater" bears one section of King Crimson worship, "Burden" is, in its entirety, about as sincere a tribute to the prog legends as we'll ever hear. The entire song is a stunning reminder of why anyone ever became a fan of this genre in the first place, bearing more than a passing resemblance to such Robert Fripp-penned masterpieces as "Epitaph" [from In the Court...] and "Starless" [from Red - which I personally consider to be one of the greatest songs ever written]. This song, better than any other, highlights how integral a part of Opeth Per Wiberg has become since joining the band on the Damnation record. His synth play, which was really no more than an afterthought on Ghost Reveries really carries whole sections of Watershed, lending another significant layer of atmosphere to what was already one of the richest sounds in all of music.
"Porcelain Heart" is probably the most 'traditional' Opeth song on this album, but it, too, is not without its fair share of surprises. Soft, lullabye-esque verses backed only by acoustic guitar, piano and mellotron [no percussion] quickly give way to whirlwinds of thick, doomy chord chugging, overlayed with swirling sixteenth note arpeggios, which just as quickly collapse back into quiet atmospheric passages. And in the midst of it all is an absolutely epic drum fill by Martin Axenrot [another relative newcomer], which would qualify as a solo if it weren't for the other instruments playing over it. Axenrot really adds a new dimension to Opeth that wasn't really present during Martin Lopez' lengthy tenure with the band - an approach to drumming that's more in line with the likes of legendary prog skinsmen Neil Peart and Bill Bruford than the metal school headed by the likes of Dave Lombardo and Pete Sandoval. Not to throw Lopez or Anders Nordin under the bus, but there's no doubt that Axenrot is the most creative and interesting drummer that Opeth has ever had.
"Hessian Peel" is the lengthiest song on this album. This track is essentially bifurcated into a lengthy mellow portion which would've sounded right at home on Damnation and an equally lengthy death metal section that recalls My Arms, Your Hearse. It would be tedious to describe the song in much greater detail, because listening to it would be a lot more interesting. Same is true of the closer "Hex Omega", which, like "Burden", really showcases Wiberg as a key fixture of Opeth's new and improved sound.
There's one key aspect of Watershed that I've left unmentioned, though it really sets the album apart from previous Opeth records - the drastic reduction of repetition. It can't really be seen in the track durations, but this album moves MUCH faster than any previous Opeth release. The songwriting is far denser, due in large part to the fact that many riffs that would ordinarily be repeated eight times by the band are only repeated four times on these songs. There are exceptions, of course, but the vast majority of this record is much more compact than anything Opeth has done in the past. This streamlining should really do away with one of the biggest complaints about the band that's lingered since the days of Orchid and Morningrise nearly a decade and a half ago.
In short, Watershed is an album that really breathes new life into a band that was thought to have been on a slow but steady decline. It's the freshest Opeth has sounded since Still Life and a major overhaul of the formula they've been following since that album.
